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…ACSI Oct 5th – GoogleDocs 202…

I do apologize for being away with the Flu today. Please know I would love to connect with you for follow-up, or to hear how you are using Google Drive in your unique situation. I will be on Twitter during session A from 10:30 – 11:30 and during session B from 1:10 – 2:10. Please use the Twitter Hashtag #acsigd and you can communicate directly by mentioning me @paulkellybc.

Intro:

The main goal of this hands-on session is to glean from one another with respect to GoogleDocs. This is a “Show & Tell” session – I mean, we have the resources of everyone in the room – so, like a great potluck get-together, what did you bring to share?

If you’ve only just started with Google Drive, then I suggest you spend time here watching Google’s YouTube videos: http://bit.ly/UHM6Nz

Another idea is to sit with someone who has been using GoogleDocs for a while – ask to see how/why they use this tool.

Sharing & Privacy

To get the party started, here are a few GoogleDocs that I have used in the past while. I chose to use GoogleDocs over Dropbox because all of these files needed to be editable in live-time.

*NOTE – in order to share Google Drive files so others can view or edit, you must change the privacy setting through the ‘Share’ button in the top right-hand side of your page.

Then you will be given these options depending on how ‘open’ you want the file. My suggestion is that if you are only ‘sharing’ for view purposes only, then chose the “anyone with the link” option and also give them “view only” access.

This one is kinda’ cheesy, but it was very helpful and fun. It started with just a few of us wanting to know people’s names in the lunch line or for follow-up discussion. We tweeted the link and then lots of people jumped in to help with spelling, linking, etc.

This was truly an experiment in the making. Last year I was teaching this on campus using the amazing Online Calc12 course and I was having a hard time checking in with kids to make sure they were staying caught up. So, this was a quick check-in way to at a glance see where everyone was at.

It was a bit bumpy at first – the kids who had Gmail accounts were all good – but the others needed to make accounts.

Have you ever needed to get a quick bunch of info? How often have you had students write it on a piece of paper…then you have to collate it all together? Well, check this one out that I used to quickly get a class list of student emails.

Yes, this sends directly to a spreadsheet where you can cut and paste etc.

This happened to be a Document with a table because I didn’t really know how to use the Spreadsheet aspects yet. But, I like how it has turned out. It is an open, editable, GoogleDoc that you can access via link only.

I’m not sure if I should admit this, but this survey was created in three minutes. Now, given more time perhaps I would have had a few better questions. On the other hand…I just wanted to produce something…just to see what would come back.

The results were very interesting – some very general; others very, very, very specific.

If anything, it was good food for thought for our Admin team and our staff…

Two other very common uses for me:

i) My secretary and I have a few docs on the go all the time. It’s like our office ‘to-do’ list and included files at once. Sometimes I’ll start a file and get it going and she will finish it; other times she will put in the nuts and bolts and I will come with the finer details at the end. Either way, often we are both accessing and altering the files as they are nearing completion.

ii) Staff meetings – our High School staff come to meetings with their laptops open to our shared GoogleDoc Spreadsheet. They can add any agenda items or make comments, raise concerns, ask questions well in advance, or right as the meeting is starting. As we go through the meeting, we are all on the same page with the ‘minutes’ that are created because we are all contributing to the discussion (and someone in the group is usually recording this in the Spreadsheet!).

Your Turn:

I’ve yet to do anything with the Drawing or Presentation Docs. Have you?

I encourage you to post and share a copy of one of your GoogleDocs in the comment section below. Be sure to click the “Share” button and change the privacy to “Anyone with the Link” so we can see your file. Thanks in advance for letting us all glean from you 😉

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4 thoughts on “…ACSI Oct 5th – GoogleDocs 202…”

Thanks for for sharing these useful examples.
I use Google Drive to store and share the handouts from my class. Instead of uploading files to my class website I simply link to a shared document on the drive. And whenever I need to update a document on my computer the change gets synchronized automatically online. This saves me a lot of time.

Thanks for your comment and for sharing how you use GDocs in your classroom. Have you run into any compatibility or printing issues? Also, how was student/parent response to you using a link in the cloud vs actually attaching the file? Do all students have accounts? Or is it just public with the link? Last question, students ever tried the funny business of deleting stuff from the cloud?

To answer your questions, Paul:
Yes, I have had screwed up printouts, even when a uploaded files without converting to the g-docs format. I mainly use PDF’s now. Those are shared as “public with a link” and can be accessed without logging in. I have not run into issues of deleting files from the cloud yet.

Thanks, Rita. The public with a link option is so powerful for communication – very similar to Dropbox’s public link. I am using these services often. Just yesterday I needed to distribute a 22mb .pdf file that didn’t need editing. It was obviously too big for email so I threw it in my Dropbox and shared the link. Worked really well.
Thanks again for clicking into eduglean and for taking the time to comment. I appreciate it.